Samsung was forced to remove its 7.7 inch Galaxy Tab from the product’s launch at a major German trade fair on Saturday, the latest blow for the Korean electronics giant.
The tablet's erasure from the IFA technology conference in Berlin followed Apple securing a court injunction on its sale and marketing in Germany on Friday, a Samsung spokesman told Bloomberg on Saturday.
Prior to the injunction Samsung had presented its 7.7 inch tablet with the sticker “Not for Sale in Germany”, according to the All About Samsung blog.
By Saturday, Samsung had scrubbed booths of any reference to the tablet, leaving only its Wave devices and Galaxy Note.
Samsung also removed a YouTube video that accompanied the launch page promoting the device.
"It’s as if the tablet never happened," the This is my next blog reported.
According to Foss Patents blogger Florian Mueller, Apple either applied for a second injunction in Germany against the new product or claimed that Samsung was in breach of the original German injunction on the 10.1.
The removal of the Tab 7.7 from Germany followed Samsung’s agreement last week to defer the Australian launch of its Tab 10.1 a few weeks to the end of September.
This was a sign of “unambiguous weakness on Samsung’s part in Australia”, said Mueller.
The first German court order temporarily banned Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 across Europe but was later scaled back to just Germany, while the Netherlands recently blocked the sale of Galaxy smartphones.
The next major bridge for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and smartphones will be crossed in the US, where a hearing has been scheduled for 13 October.
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